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The
jury process for an art competition is a bit like a cattle call for
dancers for a big musical: a quick look to eliminate those who are the
wrong type or skill level, a call back to cut some more, then a final
selection. The jury, also called a panel, is normally made up of one to three people from the art world—curators, gallery or museum directors, critics, art professors or artists. Many of those not labeled as artists are in fact, but are identified by their day jobs. For most public art projects and some grants and fellowships, panels also contain voting and non-voting representatives of relevant government agencies and local community and arts councils. Jurors are usually paid just enough to make the task worth their while. The size of the fee is normally proportional to the fame of the juror in the belief that a “name” will bring more entrants and more viewers. Some local art centers become so enamored with the reflected glory of having a famous person on board that their show announcements blast, “Juried by [famous person],” but omit the names of the artists. One artist finds this so disrespectful, he wrote, “Frankly, I would never enter a show where they do that. Not only out of principle, but if they think so little of the artists, I wonder about how they’ll treat us or the work.” But another commented, “I don’t care, it’ll look good on my résumé.” Of course, it’s useful to know the name, occupation and organizational affiliation of a juror because it can help you decide whether to enter a competition. In fact, it can help you even if you don’t enter because you might want to send a slide package to that juror’s gallery or museum later. |
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Nuts and Bolts What follows is a generalized description of how a show is “juried” (not a real word outside of the art world), but it also applies in essence to grants, public art commissions and other kinds of competitions. A juror with sole responsibility for a show may be sent slide carousels to view in private, but normally panelists are gathered in one place and the slides are projected onto a screen one after the other for a few seconds each. If an image doesn’t fit within the restrictions of the competition, it’s summarily rejected. (For instance, a portrait submitted to a landscape show or a pastel to a watercolor competition. Entries that failed to conform in another way, such as lacking the correct entry fee or being from an artist living outside the required area, don’t make it even this far.)Slides that don’t catch the interest of at least one juror are also rejected during this first stage, as this includes most slides that are hard to read because they are out of focus or under or over exposed, etc. The survivors are projected again to winnow them further. Sometimes there is discussion, sometimes passionate, over the merits of a particular piece. There is usually a vote on each slide, majority rules, although some competitions allow for a juror to have a “reverse veto”—the piece can stay for another round. For some shows, what’s in and what’s not is settled in two rounds, but many require a third. All of this takes time—a total of an hour or two for every couple hundred slides, and some competitions receive more than a thousand. The process can be quite draining, obviously, and some jurors report a tendency for the eye and mind to tire after looking at a couple hundred images. In any event, if awards are to be given, there can be a final run-through for that, but often winners are selected by a different judge after the actual work is hung. Staff members from the sponsoring organization, often assisted by volunteers, attend the jury sessions to load and run the slide projector(s) and help with other practical matters but should say nothing about the perceived merits of any work. In most cases—certainly for government organizations and nonprofits receiving government funding—members of the public are also allowed to view the proceedings, an activity highly recommended by those who have done it, as is volunteering. |
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Plan ahead
is always good advice. Beat deadlines by at least a few days. But since
many shows project slides in roughly the same order as received, some
experienced artists recommend getting the application in about
two-thirds of the way into the window of submission; by this time about
half the entries have been received. The thinking is that the jurors
are warming up in the beginning and tired toward the end, so being in
the middle of the slide show is best. In any event, most art
opportunities automatically reject everything that misses the deadline,
but keep the entry fees. If you hear about a show too late to make it
on time, though, call the director of the exhibition to find out how
much leeway will be allowed. Some exhibition presenters have been
willing to extend deadlines for various reasons. But, cautions artist
and professor emeritus Evan Lindquist, “Don’t ask them to bend the
rules for you. (Don’t try to persuade them. It’s their show, and they
don’t need any more stress. Inquire and accept their answer
gracefully.)” |
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Standards
Being
art and thus probably not “quantifiable,” there are no universally
agreed-upon standards, so each show is judged by different criteria.
Some organizations issue guidelines to jurors, some even give them
score sheets. In competitions involving work restricted to a particular
medium, such as watercolor, an entry can be judged on how well it meets
certain ideals of technique, composition, color, etc, so such
competitions tend to be “easier” for jurors. But as a sculptor from
Indiana wrote, “You can judge chickens at a county fair and come up
with a pretty good consensus of which one is the best, because the
standards are predetermined, but you really can’t do this to decide the
One Best Animal of All Animals. Are you judging for looks, size, speed,
loudness, quietness, fluffiness, longevity or edibility?” With art,
each juror’s taste, experience, expectations, prejudices and ethics are
really the deciding factors.
A
few artist groups and publications have lobbied for universal
standards. While such might make the job of the juror simpler—and help
artists anticipate what a jury is looking for—there is no evidence they
would make for a better show or better art. At best, such rules would
simply codify the prejudices of the particular group of people who drew
them up. If taken to its logical conclusion, it also would turn jurors
into mere scoring clerks. Inside the jurors’
minds
Naturally,
many artists look for ways to “beat the system.” Beginning artists tend
to believe that knowing the type of art work a juror does is the key.
If the juror’s own art is in some way similar to what they do, they
imagine, their chances are increased. But a juror is just as likely to
be turned off by similar work—perhaps because of perceived flaws in it
or even because of latent jealousy. A conscientious juror tries to look
for good work, no matter the style. Don Furst, chair of the art and
theatre department, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said:
“I don’t think you could necessarily predict what kind of art I do
based on what kind of show I have selected [as a juror]. I believe it
is possible to pick the best work within any number of very different
categories. Intensity, freshness, design coherence, etc. all transcend
categories.”But there is but there is some “handicapping” you can do by noting the affiliations of the jurors and the type of sponsoring organization. If, for instance, your work uses watercolor in a highly unconventional way, a member of the American or National Watercolor Society (AS or NWS), organizations with fairly conservative views about the use of the medium, would probably not rate it highly. On the other hand, if your work fits the requirements and is technically excellent but conventional, you might do better in a show with such a juror than in a general show judged by the curator of a contemporary museum or gallery. Similarly, the type of organization sponsoring the show can give you a clue; a show in the gallery of an art school noted for its contemporary outlook will have different sorts of jurors than would, say, an art center in a culturally conservative small town. Common sense based on reading the prospectus is important, too, because you wouldn’t want to submit conventional cowboy art, for instance, to a show looking for “new and exciting experimental work,” or vice versa. As you gain experience, you can build a list of which jurors—and which types of jurors—and venues seem to favor or disfavor your work. |
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Does it help if the juror knows your work? Yes and no.
The juror’s
allegiance is to the institution that is paying him or her—if not for
ethical reasons, then at least for financial ones. For many jurors,
it’s a gig that pays a relatively good hourly rate and if they want to
do more such gigs, it would be counterproductive to favor an artist
whose
work seemed out of place. On the other hand, given the amount of time a
juror has to look at a slide, it can help if a juror already knows and
thinks well of your work. And, consciously or not, some jurors favor
art done by their colleagues, neighbors or ex-students. For instance,
Furst reported, “for some exhibitions, if I know who the juror was, I
can tell before I open the catalog where a majority of the prize
winners went to school. HINT: It is the same as where the juror
teaches.” But that kind of outright prejudice and favoritism is
relatively rare. |
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Not only do jurors have differing tastes, it turns out some have their own ideas about what the show should be like. For instance, Berkeley, CA, painter Janine Brown reported that in a jury session she watched, one juror preferred smaller work in order to have the greatest number of pieces in the show. Yet larger pieces usually have an edge: smaller work is often at a disadvantage because its problems are magnified when its slide is projected, whereas a larger work may have some of its weaknesses made less apparent in comparison. And, because of the limited time available to view only one image, work that makes an immediate impact generally stands a better chance than work that “grows on you.” top |
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Things that work against
you “Bad drawing,” “playing to the crowd,” “stale ideas” and “overworking” were mentioned as turnoffs. One juror was offended by cutesy titles. Another disdained cliches. Each year seems to have its fashionable subject matter. Recently, these have included angels, empty houses with writing on them and images of Frida Khalo. Several years ago it was snarling dogs. Walter Darby Bannard wrote in arts magazine, March 1985: “In fifteen years of jurying, from Worcester to Washington, from Durham to Dallas, I have never, for example, juried a show which did not have at least one image of a menacing dog with long, sharp teeth.” That doesn’t mean that you should never use an image of a snarling dog, an angel, or any other thing, for as Evan Lindquist put it, “a snarlingdog is a cliché only when used as a cliché. There is no such thing as a ‘bad’ idea in Art. Any idea can be used expressively rather than as a worthless cliché." |
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Bad slides: Other than screwing up by entering a show for which you are not qualified (by medium, subject, age, geography, ethnicity, gender or some other reason), bad slides are your own worst enemy. Jurors for a recent show looked at about two thousand slides for two to three seconds each, a correspondent reported. “If the slides were hard to read, they just went on.” See page 61 for information on photographing art. Pressure:One juror mentioned she had been called by artists who said they were entering a show she was judging, and she was very turned off by that.General sloppiness: Not having your slides together in a sleeve or not having your submission package orderly won’t prejudice the jurors against you, but may mean that some of your slides get lost or are shown backwards. Which will cut your chances. Poorly written materials: Usually not important for a juried show, but important for grants, RFQs and RFPs (for public art) and similar applications. See page 40 for writing tips. |
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Inflated résumé.
Ethics aside, the art world is a small place; sooner or later it will
be found out that an
exaggeration or lie is simply that. Furthermore, your
résumé should only include real shows, etc., in real
venues; what might impress the general public can turn off a pro in no
time. He or she knows the difference between a legitimate gallery and a
private show in your
friend Andrea’s apartment even if you call it Gallery Andrea.
Similarly, listing participation in an open studio or in a
come-one-come-all member show at the local art center normally looks
desperate no matter how valid the experience itself was. The exceptions
are: if you already have an impressive résumé (such
participation shows your support of the community) or if you have
virtually nothing else. Also, don’t list vanity (you pay to show)
galleries. Curators and gallery owners and just about everyone else in
the art world knows which those are, and they are not impressed.
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The Art
Opportunities Book: Finding, Entering and Winning
is published by studioNOTES. Graphics and text copyright studioNOTES
2004. All rights reserved. Please contact for permission to quote.
Last
updated Aug 19, 2004.
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